INTERVIEW: Noam Chomsky

The Guardian (UK)

MIT professor, writer and activist

There’s a lot of focus on the American death toll but
personally I think that’s partly propaganda
exaggeration. Polls have demonstrated time and time
again that Americans are willing to accept a high death
toll - although they don’t like it, they’re willing to
accept it - if they think it’s a just cause. There’s
never been anything like the so-called Vietnam Syndrome:
it’s mostly a fabrication. And in this case too if they
thought it was a just cause, the 500 or so deaths would b
e mourned, but not considered a dominant reason for not
continuing. No, the problem is the justice of the cause.

Right after the war, by April, polls demonstrated pretty
clearly that Americans thought the United Nations, not
the United States, ought to have prime responsibility
for reconstruction, political and economic, in the post-
war period. There’s little support for the government’s
efforts to maintain what amounts to a powerful,
permanent, military and diplomatic presence in Iraq.

In fact, it is little discussed, probably for that
reason. Not very many people are aware of the fact that
the US is planning to construct what will be the world’s
largest embassy in Iraq, with maybe 3,000 people. The
military plans to maintain permanent bases and a
substantial US military presence as long as they want
it. The facts are reported, but marginally. Most people
don’t know about it. The orders to open the Iraqi
economy up to foreign takeover are again known to people
who pay close attention, but not to the general
population.

The general population offers little support for the
long-term effort to ensure that Iraq remains a client
state with only nominal sovereignty and a base for other
US actions in the region. Those commitments have only a
very shallow popular support and that’s more of a reason
for the objections, the uneasiness about policy, than
the number of casualties.

The trial [of Saddam Hussein] ought to be under some
kind of international auspices that have some degree of
credibility, so not something which is obviously
victor’s justice, which, no matter how much of a monster
one is, doesn’t carry credibility.

So first of all there’s a matter of form, but also
there’s a matter of content. The trial should bring to
the bar of justice his associates, those who gave
decisive and substantial support for him right through
his worst atrocities, long after the war with Iran.
Again in 1991 when he crushed the rebellions viciously -
the rebellions that might well have overthrown him. All
of those people should be brought to justice. They’re
not all equally culpable but they were all critically
involved - that includes European countries right
through the 80s, including Russia and France, Germany
and others, it includes, crucially, the United States
and Britain all the way through, including 1991.

They should also bring to justice those who were
responsible for the murderous sanction regime which
surely led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of
Iraqis and devastated the society so completely that
they could not carry out what has happened elsewhere,
where the US and Britain supported comparable monsters -
namely, they were overthrown from within.

It seems not unlikely that the same might have happened
in Iraq had the society not been devastated and had
people not been compelled by the sanctions to rely on
the tyrant for mere survival. Actually there’s even more
evidence of that coming out today as it’s been revealed
in the Kay investigation and others how fragile the hold
on power was at the end.

So anyone who contributed to Saddam Hussein’s atrocities
to whatever they degree they did, they’re culpable as
well and in some fashion an honest trial should deal
with that.

On the US election

Kerry is sometimes described as Bush-lite, which is not
inaccurate, and in general the political spectrum is
pretty narrow in the United States, and elections are
mostly bought, as the population knows.

But despite the limited differences both domestically
and internationally, there are differences. And in this
system of immense power, small differences can translate
into large outcomes.

My feeling is pretty much the way it was in the year
2000. I admire Ralph Nader and Denis Kucinich very much,
and insofar as they bring up issues and carry out an
educational and organisational function - that’s
important, and fine, and I support it.

However, when it comes to the choice between the two
factions of the business party, it does sometimes, in
this case as in 2000, make a difference. A fraction.

That’s not only true for international affairs, it’s
maybe even more dramatically true domestically. The
people around Bush are very deeply committed to
dismantling the achievements of popular struggle through
the past century. The prospect of a government which
serves popular interests is being dismantled here. It’s
an administration that works, that is devoted, to a
narrow sector of wealth and power, no matter what the
cost to the general population. And that could be
extremely dangerous in the not very long run.

You could see it clearly in the way they dealt with,
what is by common agreement, the major domestic economic
problem coming along, namely the exploding health care
costs. They’re traceable to the fact that the US has a
highly inefficient healthcare system - far higher
expenditure than other comparable countries, and not
particularly good outcomes. Rather poor, in fact. And
it’s because it’s privatised.

So they passed a huge prescription drug bill, which is
primarily a gift to the pharmaceutical corporations and
insurance companies. It’s a huge taxpayer subsidy.
They’re already wealthy beyond dreams of avarice. And
that’s their constituency. And as that continues, with
significant domestic problems ahead, for the general
population it’s extremely harmful.

Again there isn’t a great difference, so for maybe 90%
of the population over the past 20 years, real income
has either stagnated or declined, while for the top few
percent, it’s just exploded astronomically. But there
are differences and the present group in power is
particularly cruel and savage in this respect.

Interview
by Matthew Tempest

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/voices/story/0,12820,1168160,00.html